One of the "John Does" targeted by the RIAA's P2P snoops is attempting to …

As part of its stepped-up efforts against file-sharing on college campuses, the RIAA has begun filing lawsuits against college students who don't take advantage of the group's discounted settlement offer. A student at Boston University is fighting back, challenging the RIAA's system of filing John Doe lawsuits in order to discover the names connected to IP addresses uncovered by the music industry's investigators.

Filed in the US District Court of the District of Massachusetts, "John Doe's" motion seeks to have the RIAA's subpoenas seeking the names behind the IP addresses quashed. It's apparently the first motion of its kind made in a campus file-sharing case, and Ray Beckerman told Ars that the only such motions he is aware of in other file-sharing cases were filed in Manhattan; all three of them were denied.

The motion seeks to have the RIAA's ex parte discovery order vacated, which would prevent the record labels in Arista v. Does 1-21 from learning the identity of the IP addresses flagged by MediaSentry from Boston University. The motion argues that there is no prima facie evidence of copyright infringement occurring and points out that federal courts have "disfavored" allowing expedited, ex parte discovery in John Doe complaints.

From the RIAA's perspective, the current system of being able to effectively file a lawsuit against an IP address and then use discovery to find the identity of the person who owned the account associated with the IP address works just fine. Of course, it's not as good as the good old days when the RIAA could just demand that an ISP could turn over information without a court order. A federal appeals court put that practice to an end in 2003.

The biggest concern with the John Doe lawsuits is that it allows the record labels to acquire personal data without the subject of the lawsuit ever learning about it or being allowed to mount a defense against the allegations. Instead, the RIAA gets the desired information, drops the John Doe lawsuits, and files a new lawsuit if the persons fingered for infringement refuse the RIAA's settlement demands.